Father Perkin enjoys unexpected challenges, joys of priesthood

Father David Perkin, a Vicar General and Moderator of the Curia for the Diocese of Nashville, will retire from active ministry on June 30. He is approaching several milestones in his life as a priest, including the 35th anniversary of working with the diocesan Tribunal, the 21st anniversary of working in the diocesan Chancery Office, the 10th anniversary of serving as the pastor of St. Patrick Church in Nashville, the 40th anniversary of his ordination as a priest, and his 68th birthday. Photo by Rick Musacchio

In 40 years as a priest, Father David Perkin has been a pastor of a large parish and a small one, ministered to young people and the separated and divorced, taught high school religion classes and studied canon law, and served as one of the top administrators for the Diocese of Nashville.

“The diversity of ministries that I’ve been able to be involved with, it’s been so, so surprising and wonderful,” said Father Perkin, who will retire at the end of June.

Father Perkin first began to feel an attraction to the priesthood as a young boy living in New Orleans and attending St. Louis Cathedral School there.

“I can always remember being very interested in and attracted to the celebration of the Eucharist in grammar school,” Father Perkin said. “The sacredness of it, the holiness of it, the solemnity of it.”

“I can remember sitting there even as a young child (thinking) what goes on here when Mass is celebrated is extremely important. You’re too young to understand everything going on but one day I’m going to understand everything I can,” Father Perkin said.

“Years later I realized that attraction wasn’t only to the Mass, but to the priesthood,” he added.

After the fifth grade, Father Perkin’s family moved to Knoxville. As a student at Knoxville Catholic High School, he began to pursue his interest in a religious vocation.

“My best friend and I both shared an attraction to religious life,” but they were unsure if that meant with a religious order or as a diocesan priest, Father Perkin said.

They enrolled in St. Bernard College in Cullman, Alabama, which was owned and operated by Benedictine monks who also had an abbey there.

His friend was attracted to monasticism and became a member of the Benedictine community. Father Perkin would go to the chapel at the abbey to watch the monks during evening prayer trying to figure out what his friend found so attractive, he said.

Though he respected the monks, he decided their life wasn’t what he was looking for. In talking to a priest on the staff of the college, “he helped me discern that my attraction wasn’t to a religious order but to the diocesan priesthood,” Father Perkin said.

‘The right place’

He talked to Bishop Joseph Durick about becoming a seminarian for the Diocese of Nashville, which at the time included all of Tennessee.

Father David Perkin talks with Aidan Harper, 9, and his grandmother, Donna Harper, after Mass at St. Patrick Church in Nashville. Father Perkin will complete 10 years as pastor of St. Patrick on June 30, the day of his retirement from active ministry. During his nearly 40 years as a priest, he has served as a pastor, a high school teacher, a canon lawyer, a youth minister, and a top administrator in the Chancery Office of the Diocese of Nashville. Photo by Rick Musacchio

He was given a choice of seminaries he could attend and he chose the only one that was Benedictine: St. Meinrad Seminary in Indiana.

“I liked the atmosphere that the Benedictine monks and the abbey created” at St. Bernard, Father Perkin said, so he chose St. Meinrad. “I’m so grateful and thankful now that I did. … It proved to be the perfect place for me in terms of discernment. It was the happiest years I’ve ever lived because it was the right place at the right time for me.”

After graduating from the seminary three years later, Father Perkin took a leave of absence for a year, and went back to Knoxville.

“I wanted a normal workaday world experience,” he said. “I knew otherwise I never would.”

After a year, his sense of his vocation was as strong as ever, and he told Bishop James Niedergeses he was ready to return to his seminary studies. The bishop granted his request to study in Rome, and he spent the next four years living at the North American College and earning a Bachelor’s in Sacred Theology from the Pontifical Gregorian College.

“I deliberately wanted a different experience in a different setting for the sake of having a different experience,” Father Perkin said of his interest in studying in Rome. “I thoroughly enjoyed it and to this day am grateful for the experience.”

Comparing his time at the two seminaries, Father Perkin said, “St. Meinrad was an externalizing experience. Rome was an internalizing experience.”

He went to St. Meinrad to answer the question of whether he had an vocation to the priesthood. “St. Meinrad helped me identify my own feelings,” Father Perkin said. “When I finished my three years there, there was no question, ‘I have a vocation.’”

In Rome, Father Perkin was “internalizing my prayer life and spirituality. I was no longer answering a question” but preparing for the priesthood, he said.

Father Perkin was ordained a transitional deacon while studying in Rome and Bishop Niedergeses was there to vest him. During the ordination, the bishop told him, “Remember David, a mistake is not being made today.”

“I remember how powerful it was for him to say that and how supportive that was,” Father Perkin said.

His ordination to the priesthood was held on July 21, 1978, Father Perkin’s 28th birthday, in his home parish of Immaculate Conception Church in Knoxville.

“The thing everybody who was there remembers about my ordination was how horribly hot and humid it was” in the church that had no air conditioning, Father Perkin said.

He had asked a music group from a parish in Chattanooga where he served as a seminarian to provide the music for his ordination. While there, he had sung with the group.

“I’ve never studied a musical instrument, but I’ve always, always, all the way through grammar school, all the way through high school, all the way through St. Meinrad, all the way through Rome, I was in choirs,” he said. “Singing, especially for the liturgy, has always been a part of my educational experience.”

‘Loving all of it’

After his ordination, he served for two years as the associate pastor at St. Joseph Church in Madison.

His next assignment was as the associate pastor at Sacred Heart Church in Knoxville, where he served for four years.

While in Knoxville, Father Michael Johnston, who was then the principal at Knoxville Catholic High, asked him to join the faculty to teach religion. “I loved those years of teaching,” Father Perkin said. “I loved the classroom dynamic and the experience of interacting with the students.”

He also was in charge of the SEARCH program in Knoxville, and was associate director of vocations in the Knoxville deanery. His last year in Knoxville he was the associate pastor at St. John Neumann Church.

“In those five years in Knoxville I was doing parish work, high school work, youth ministry work and vocations work. And loving all of it,” Father Perkin said.

New assignments

In 1985, Father Perkin expressed an interest in returning to school to earn an advanced degree. Bishop Niedergeses surprised him by asking him to study canon law and then return to work in the diocesan Tribunal.

He spent the next two years earning a Licentiate in Canon Law, also called a JCL, from the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.

In his seminary days, he had studied canon law but not in a systematic and in-depth fashion, Father Perkin said. At Catholic University, “I remember how in depth they were, teaching you not only the canons but the history behind the canons,” Father Perkin said.

“What I found was how enriching it was because the Code of Canon Law deals with every aspect of the Church,” he said. “It deals with the sacraments, it deals with church organizations, with administration of church assets.

“It proved to be far more challenging, enriching and satisfying than I ever thought it would,” Father Perkin said. “It’s proved to be a great blessing.”

When he returned to Nashville, Father Perkin began working with the Tribunal and in 1989 was appointed Judicial Vicar for the diocese.

In 1991, he received his first assignment as a pastor, at St. Stephen Catholic Community in Old Hickory.

“I liked everything about being a pastor,” Father Perkin said. “I was engaged with everybody. It was a bit challenging because as a new pastor you’re immediately charged with responsibilities of hiring people, coming up with a parish budget, overseeing finances., things you probably hadn’t done before.”

St. Stephen was then, and remains today, a vibrant parish and community, Father Perkin said. “I really enjoyed getting to know the people there.”

In 1997, Bishop Edward Kmiec asked Father Perkin to work full-time in the Chancery Office as the Moderator of the Curia and his administrative assistant. “I hated leaving (St. Stephen), but I learned that as a diocesan priest, I was ordained to serve the needs of the diocese as defined by the bishop,” Father Perkin said. “That’s why I’ve always been open to different assignments and opportunities.”

“I never anticipated I would work in the Tribunal,” Father Perkin said. “I never anticipated I would be asked to work with the bishop in the Chancery.”

Later Bishop Kmiec added to his duties the positions of Vicar General and Chancellor. He served on several diocesan boards, including the Presbyteral Council, College of Consultors, Finance Board and the Diocesan Review Board.

His work at the Chancery “was totally different from parish work, totally different from high school work,” Father Perkin said. “It was very enriching, very challenging.”

The challenges included dealing with the impact of the clergy sexual abuse crisis, “probably the biggest nightmare of my priesthood,” Father Perkin said.

“That was before we had the structures we now have,” such as having a diocesan victim’s assistance coordinator, Safe Environment coordinator or spokesperson, Father Perkin said. “I was doing all those roles. It became overwhelming.”

The Church came out of the experience stronger, Father Perkin said. “I hope so, I think so, I pray so. We’re more organized, more attentive, as we should be, and we’re more responsive, as we should be.”

Without a full-time assignment to a parish, Father Perkin would help celebrate weekend Masses traveling around the diocese. “It gave me a different experience of belonging to a community,” he said. “It gave me an appreciation for just how blessed it is to have a stable community to celebrate the sacraments through the liturgical year.”

After Bishop Kmiec was appointed Bishop of Buffalo in 2004, and Bishop David Choby was installed as bishop in 2006, some of Father Perkin’s responsibilities at the Chancery office were lessened, and he was given a second responsibility as the resident pastor of St. Patrick Church in Nashville.

Bishop Choby “did that for two reasons. He knew the parish was small, given the fact that it was small it would be workable to do both jobs,” Father Perkin said. “It’s proven to be exactly that.”

Also, St. Patrick was just minutes away from the nursing home where his aging mother was living, Father Perkin added.

The experience of being pastor at St. Patrick has been very different from his previous assignment as pastor of St. Stephen, Father Perkin said. “One of the unique things about St. Patrick is the majority of parishioners who are stable and active here don’t live anywhere near the parish. They deliberately choose to be a parishioner here.”

“Every parish has a different personality and dynamic, but it’s been good. It’s a great parish,” Father Perkin said.

‘Unexpected joys’

After his retirement, Father Perkin will continue to live in Nashville. “I don’t’ have any grandiose plans for a new second career,” he said. He is looking forward to the freedom to travel and a chance to reconnect with distant cousins in East Tennessee.

Besides his retirement, July will be filled with several milestones in Father Perkin’s life. “July 1 will be the 35th anniversary of my working at the tribunal, my 21st anniversary of working at the Chancery, and the 10th anniversary of being pastor at St. Patrick,” he said. “July 21 will be the 40th anniversary of my ordination to the priesthood and my 68th birthday.”

Asked to sum up his 40 years as a priest, Father Perkin said, “It’s a great blessing that’s been filled with unexpected challenges and unexpected joys. It’s been an opportunity to meet and know and work with certainly some of the most talented and gifted and dedicated people I will ever know.”